


Magnificently cursed

by va_lentina



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abusive Lucius Malfoy, Angst, Canon Compliant, Emotional Comfort, Emotional Hurt, Emotional pain, Established Relationship, F/M, Flashbacks, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Hints of Smut, Hopeful Ending, One Shot, POV Draco Malfoy, Post-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Sadness, Secret Relationship, Song: ivy (Taylor Swift), Taylor Swift this is your fault, and oh yeah i almost forgot, but kinda ooc?, ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 13:21:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28529151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/va_lentina/pseuds/va_lentina
Summary: “Back home, there was this huge ivy plant that just kept growing and growing against our outside wall. I thought it was quite beautiful. Tenacious.” Hermione bit down on her lower lip, almost unsure whether to say the following words. “You’re like ivy to me”.A dramione one shot based on Taylor Swift’sivy
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 4
Kudos: 51





	Magnificently cursed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [softblakegriffin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/softblakegriffin/gifts).



> The only reason I wrote this is because [Sara](https://twitter.com/blkegrffn13) prompted it to me after I read _Isolation_ and I wanted her to lose her mind on her birthday so here’s a gift for you b!tch <3  
> Inspired by Taylor Swift’s _ivy_ , canon-verse (kinda... I mean it's dramione... anyway,) and post final war but pretty much OOC because there is little to no backstory and development, it’s literally just dramione ~vibing  
> Huge thanks to Ines for being an incredible beta!!  
> I’ll be waiting to hear your thoughts about it :) you can also find me on Twitter as [@fleablck](https://twitter.com/fleablck)  
> Enjoy!

* * *

* * *

“So, for example, I could do this…” he said, placing all of his cards down one by one, “and then this… and then…” and he had nothing left in his hands, much to Hermione’s chagrin. She quickly closed the fanned out cards in her hands, already anticipating the satisfied expression on his face.

“And then I believe I win.” And there it was: Draco raised his eyes, a sneaky smile adorning his features. “Right, Granger?”

“Yeah” she scoffed, collecting the rest of cards from the table, “beginner’s luck. I was close to winning anyway.”

“Of course, you were” he kept smiling, his long fingers locked together in front of him as his gaze followed her hands moving the cards around. “You could at least compliment me for getting the hold of a Muggle game so quickly, you know.”

“Oh, yes, so very surprising of you, you can play a game of cards, congratulations!” she mocked him, standing up to put the deck back in her bag.

“You’re such a sore loser.”

“Beg your pardon?” screamed Hermione turning back to face him, her eyebrows almost touching her hair. In her defense, it did take her a long time to convince him to play and to actually teach him the game: the least she expected was to win at least one match.

“Typical Gryffindor” he grinned back.

“I am _not_ a sore loser!” she replied, underlining the negation with a loud sound from her palm meeting his arm. Draco didn’t even give her time to let her hand get away from him when he grabbed her wrist and pulled her closer, wrapping his arm around her waist.

“It’s fine, you can admit I’m more intelligent than you,” he said looking up at her, while Hermione huffed and turned her face away.

“It’s hardly a matter of intelligence. It’s got more to do with luck and statistics. It has been mathematically proven…”

“Mhm. Sure,” he cut her off, laughing when he tried to cup her cheek and she shifted out of his grip. “Oh, come on Granger, it’s just a game!” Draco laid back in his green-and-silver armchair, his annoying smile still in place.

The Slytherin dormitory was empty. Everyone had already left for Christmas and the only noise was the crackling of the fireplace. The dim and ever-greenish light cast a surreal shade on his features, highlighting his already sharp cheekbones and playing with the gray of his eyes while they followed Hermione.

“I haven’t said one single thing,” she snapped back, her hair moving around in a messy cloud as she kind of nodded with every new word. It was an old habit of hers, Draco had noticed: every time she was correcting someone, she would almost gesture with her head, accompanying her explanation with slight shakes of her head. It was annoyingly cute.

“Exactly” he observed.

She rolled her eyes, close to coming up with a poignant enough remark, but Draco was already up and near her, basically pushing her against the wall. He lowered his head in the nape of her neck and whispered, his voice a string of hot breath against her skin: “I could make it up to you.”

Hermione looked back at him through her lashes, something flickering in her honey-like gaze as she raised one eyebrow. “Could you, now?”

He bit down on her while his hungry hands ran immediately to her hips. A finger played with the string of her sweatpants, ready to make its way underneath them. He let his other hand follow the curve of her leg, slowly slipping toward the inner thigh. She groaned softly—purred, almost. The game was already forgotten.

“I mean, I could try.”

Hermione quickly turned around, her fingers tangled in the back of his head, twisting up in his hair while the trail of his kisses sent shivers running down her spine. She giggled when he reached her collarbone.

“Something funny, Granger?” he asked, pulling slightly back. 

Hermione grimaced back at him, trying to catch back his lips. “You know I’m ticklish.”

“Oh, right, well, in that case…” Draco exclaimed, moving his hands to take hers out of his hair and putting her arms chastely to her sides, “it’s better if I don’t touch you, then. Since you’re ticklish.”

Hermione scoffed and tried to take one hand out of his iron lock, but there was only so much she could do against his physical strength. She pushed forward a couple of times but Draco was as still as a statue, the shadow of a dark smile on his lips. He was actually enjoying it, the bastard. “Are you for real?!” she exploded after some more tries.

“I’m a man of my word, Granger! No touch” he grinned back, finally letting go of her and taking a few steps back.

It took Hermione a couple of seconds before realizing she was actually free of his hold: then, she harshly threw herself back at him, her mouth clashing on his, her teeth gripping on his lower lip. “Is ‘no touch’ your idea of making up to me?” she muttered as her fingers searched for the rim of his sweater, immediately slipping it up his head as he set her free of her top.

“You said you’re ticklish,” he smirked back, his hands back on her legs hoisting her up and letting her legs twist together on his back.

“So you’re the considerate type” she said breathlessly against his forehead, while he left little red marks on her chest and unclasped her bra.

“Absolutely. You never noticed?” he retaliated, letting her fall on the mattress under them.

“Must’ve slipped me,” Hermione commented innocently. Draco slowly slided down to her belly, his lips never leaving her soft skin.

“Let me fix that real quick, then,” he muttered in a low growl, as he placed himself in the frame of her legs, dropping to his knees. 

-

Hermione mindlessly ran her fingers on Draco’s arm draped on her belly, drawing random patterns with her nails. She turned slightly around to look at him, his head sunk in the pillow. His eyes were closed, his white eyelashes shadowing the dark circles under his eyes. His hair fell unkempt on his forehead, which was covered in tiny drops of sweat. His lips were just a few inches apart, his mouth posed in a serene expression. Hermione sighed slightly when she realized she had to break it.

“When are you leaving?”

Draco snorted and stretched his arm to pull her closer to him, turning to his side and spooning her. He buried his face in her curls, inhaling the dainty scent of her shampoo, a note of sweat mixing up with it, while basking in the sensation of her warm skin against his, feeling the curve of her back pressed against his abdomen.

“I don’t really want to think about it.”

“Draco…” She was still grazing his arm with her fingernails.

He bit the inside of his mouth. “Two day’s time.”

She nodded quietly. Her hand twisted with his as she brought it up to her mouth, where she left tiny kisses on each of his knuckles. “So this is going to be the last time,” she whispered against it.

“You said it last time as well…”

“You weren’t about to leave last time.”

“... and the time before that…”

“It was different.”

“... and the time before that. I think it’s your favourite sentence, actually.”

Hermione turned around in his arms, a sad smile on her face. “It was different,” she repeated. 

Draco closed his eyes briefly, and he hoped to find a spell powerful enough to stop time and space. A spell that could ensure he stayed at Hogwarts, or, better yet, that he stayed in his room, in his bed, with Hermione in his arms and without a single care in the world. No coming back home, no home, no space, no time, no past nor future, just an eternal and blissful present. What was that dumb quote she had once told him? Was it out of a book? Or maybe a movie? “Today is a gift, that’s why it is called ‘present’”. Draco had rolled his eyes: “This is probably the cringiest thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life,” he had said, gaining yet another one of her punches. He seized her fist, drawing his face dangerously close to hers: “This isn’t what I meant when I said I liked your hands on me”. She smirked and leaned in for a sweet kiss.

No past. No mistakes, no wrong paths, no history. No memories. No regrets. A blank emptiness that would have finally given him peace of mind.

No future. No plans, no expectations, no obligations. No family. No prospects. But this was probably the wildest of dreams, and it was especially impossible to realize when his Father’s words still rang so loudly in his mind, his marriage arrangement already laid out for him and awaiting to be fulfilled.

_“How do you still have the respectability to even begin to think about crafting such a thing?” Draco screams at his Father upon hearing the news about his new soon-to-be-bride._

_“You won’t talk to me in this manner, I will not tolerate it,” Lucius hisses back, his eyes two narrow slits of fire. “You will do as I say and you will marry…”_

_“You and your words can go to Hell, for all I care! Don’t you think you have ruined my life enough alrea—” but his question gets blocked midway, the coldness of the Malfoy family ring smashed against his cheek, the taste of metal in his mouth._

_“Be grateful that I’m still letting you go back to that damnable school for this year. As soon as you come back here for Christmas you will meet with Astoria and you’ll marry when you finish the year. It has been decided,” his Father tells him, towering over his son while trying to fake a composure he once displayed effortlessly. His cheeks are sunken now. His blond hair is nothing different than plain white, with streaks of gray here and there._

_Draco stands up, the pain in his mouth piercing through his thoughts and shaking up his insides with rage. He meets his eyes at the same height. “You should be rotting in Azkaban,” he spits in his Father’s face._

_“You should be there with me,” he quickly sibilates back._

_“Gladly,” says Draco, careful to pronounce his next words as clearly as possible, “so long as I get to see the Dementors giving you the True Love’s Kiss.”_

His mind was a tumultuous ocean of painful thoughts: every time he blinked he felt like the highest and harshest wave of the tempest had finally overwhelmed him. But, somehow, his eyes opened up again. And then closed. And then opened. And so on, in an endless cycle that never seemed to end.

He wished he could forget about the shipwreck going on inside of him at least when she was with him. But Hermione’s touch, no matter how delicate and right it felt, no matter how much he longed for it—her touch wasn’t enough stop the storm. And he couldn’t help but think how that same touch, able to shake him to his very core, that touch that brought forth an incandescent glow in him…

“Tarnished.” He could hear it in his Father’s voice, even though he never actually said it. Most of his self-deprecating thoughts came to him in his Father’s voice. _Tarnished_.

But what was tarnished? Her touch? Her? Him? For allowing it to happen? Allowing _what_ to happen? Did he _allow_ it to happen? Why was he still asking himself these questions? It should have all been gone, it should have all been water under the bridge, shouldn’t it? Why couldn’t he control his own thoughts? And how could it be tarnished when it caused something so grand and beautiful? When she was so grand and beautiful?

Draco felt Hermione’s hand gently caressing his face. “You cold?” he asked in a whisper.

She frowned slightly. “No, not really. Why?”

“Your hand is freezing.” She started pulling it away but he was quicker and he reached back for it, pressing it harder against his own cheek. “Didn’t say you could move it away.” The corner of her lip pulled up in a soft smile, as she kept stroking his porcelain-like skin with her thumb. Why couldn’t she make it all go away? She could just take it, take his worries, take his troubles, take his pain and toss everything away.

“Draco,” she called back. It was unavoidable now.

“What if I stay?” he asked suddenly.

“You know we can’t work with what if’s.” Her voice was serene and calm. Too serene and too calm.

“But what if?” he pushed, rummaging her eyes for answers.

“What will you do, then?” she simply asked. Draco groaned loudly: why did she always need a plan?

“I don’t know. Yet. I’ll find a solution.”

“If you stay, we won’t…” she began, focusing her attention on his chest and tracing lines with her fingers on it.

“I don’t care,” he tried to stop her, shutting his eyes as if he could have shut the problem away.

“… be able to keep this in the shadows…” she stubbornly went on.

“Basically everyone knows here,” he pointed out, even though he knew she wasn’t talking about _those_ shadows.

“… and what would he do if he found us out?” she finally asked, looking back up at him.

Draco raised himself up, his back against the bedframe and his hands running on his face, the fingertips moving away strays of hair from his forehead. Hermione didn’t say his name—but she didn’t have to. Lucius was a constant ghost between the two of them: a dark presence that gleamed everywhere, and that made Draco feel sick to his core.

A flash of a memory came back to him: his aunt Bellatrix telling him about her mother Druella and how she blasted her daughter’s name off of the family tree. “A tradition for every disgusting Blood Traitor—my dear sister and then my beloved cousin got what they deserved,” said Bellatrix, her eyes glittering with madness, her voice that petrifying shriek that still haunted his dreams. Draco had no idea how he had that memory in the first place: he was pretty sure one-year-old children lived in a state of total and carefree bliss. But being lulled by Bellatrix Lestrange was not an experience easily forgotten.

Lucius would have been no exception: Draco’s name to him would have become just a scorched stain on an otherwise perfect tapestry. He would have burned everything to the ground, and for one horrifying, shocking second, Draco was sure his Father could have literally set his own son on fire without a single regret.

Hermione got out of the bed and quickly dressed up. She tossed his sweater back to him and it landed ungraciously on his head. Draco grabbed it by the sleeve and pulled it down. “Where are you going?”

“ _We_ ”, she underlined with a look to him, “are going out.”

“Are you insane? It’s snowing.”

“So what?” she asked with a shrug.

“It’s cold.”

“So what?” she repeated with a half-laugh.

“We’re going to freeze to death” he commented, but he didn’t really believe in his claim. Besides, he was never really cold with Hermione in his arms.

“So”, she climbed back on the bed, leaving a loud kiss on his nose, “what? Do you know how the lunar calendar works?” she went on when he started putting his sweater on.

“Should I?”

“Well, we had a class back in… whatever. A crescent moon is the best period for growth: any type of growth. So it’s also the best moment to set a new path afoot. It’s going to be a crescent moon in two day’s time.”

“My ‘new path’ will be everything _but_ growth.”

“I’d trust the moon.”

“You sound like Lovegood. Do _not_ make a joke about her name!” he quickly added, smiling at Hermione’s laughter. 

-

“You didn’t really think this through, did you?” asked Draco when Hermione shivered and grabbed his arm to find cover under it.

“Zip it. Lake,” Hermione retorted, pointing at a tree next to the liquid mirror. She collected a bunch of tiny branches and moved the snow around to find some soil where to put them on. She quickly whipped her wand and flames rose at once, crackling and lighting up the surroundings in orange-and-golden lights.

They laid down a blanket and sat against the tree. Draco moved his wand around and two glasses with a bottle of wine appeared in front of them.

“We must beat the cold somehow,” he said, uncorking it.

“Since when do you drink wine? I thought you were more of a Scotch person.”

“I am.” The cork came out with a loud pop. “This has been laying around in the dorm for a while, the others usually drink it, but now they’re gone, so…” Hermione picked up the bottle and looked at the label.

“ _Superior Red_. Malfoy Apothecary” she read out loud. She traced the capital M stamped on it with the tip of her finger, pondering something. “Fitting name,” she said eventually, before pouring a generous glass for the both of them.

“There’s some irony in us drinking your Father’s wine significantly called ‘ _Superior_ Red’, but I can’t quite pinpoint it right now,” she concluded with a smirk.

Draco cocked his head to one side, taking the glass of red from her hands. “Cheers,” she said, holding her drink up in front of her face.

Draco let his glass click against hers and smiled, before drawing her closer under his arm. Hermione was cozily laid back against his chest and he pressed his chin on the top of her head. He mindlessly let the red juice twirl in his glass while his free hand wrapped her curls around his fingers.

“I’d live and die for these moments that we stole” she whispered spontaneously, her words followed by a little puff of steam in front of her when she spoke. “Even if it was begged and borrowed time. Even if it was starcrossed or whatever. Even if it was cursed from the very beginning.”

“Magnificently cursed” he whispered back. There was a heavy lump in his throat: he felt some kind of feeling of wrong closure approaching. But he didn’t want closure. He didn’t want to end anything and, nevertheless, he didn’t know how to stop the imminent finale from happening.

“I’m sorry” he said abruptly. “I’m sorry I’m not strong enough to… I know what I should do, I know what I _want_ to do, but I just… I’m sorry…”

Hermione sighed against him. “You don’t have to apologize. Some things are just too complicated to be untangled.” Before he could say anything, she turned around and took his face in her hands: “Hey—I know. But you don’t have to apologize. I never asked you anything, and you need to do whatever you want to do on your own terms and your own time. I know you. I know who you really are and that’s enough.”

“But I want you to know me forever” and when he said it it was almost a whisper, a feeble sound that fought against the block in his throat to get out. “I want you forever.”

Hermione lowered her gaze and moved her hands to his lap, intertwining their fingers together. “There’s this plant that symbolises fidelity and eternal life. In ancient Egypt it was dedicated to Osiris, the god of immortality. In ancient Greece it was the plant associated with Dionysus because of its vigour.”

“Ivy,” said Draco. “I was in Herbology.”

“Ivy,” she agreed back, raising her eyes back into his. Draco thought he saw the shimmer of tears in them. “Back home, there was this huge ivy plant that just kept growing and growing against our outside wall. My mum hated it. I thought it was quite beautiful, though. Tenacious. It was there in summer and winter, it kept growing no matter the sun or the rain”. She bit down on her lower lip, almost unsure whether to say the following words. “You’re like ivy to me”.

Draco felt his vision blurry up for the wave of emotion that crashed inside of him.

“You put roots in my life and you started growing around me, and now… I’m covered in you” she said closing herself in her shoulders. Hermione looked at him again and Draco felt everything around him disappear. He wanted to say something—anything, really, but he was almost locked in his own spot, magnetised by her gaze, by the sound of her voice, by her gestures and the incredible light she brought with her everywhere she went. It was still snowing lightly: a snowflake fell on the tip of her nose, making her wrinkle it up. Draco’s heart clenched with… 

“You will be with me forever. No matter what’s next.”

Draco grabbed her and held her tightly, folding himself on her, _covering_ her body with his, his face buried in her hair, his nostrils filled with her smell, his hands clenched on her coat. Hermione gently cupped the back of his neck, stroking her thumb on his skin. He took her face in his hands and kissed her and it was long and passionate and delicate and intense and he hoped he poured everything he had wanted to tell her in it. It was like a blaze in the dark. It was like the first time they kissed.

_“What the…” says Hermione, taking a few steps back in the desert corridor of the library._

_Draco looks at her, shocked by what he has just done, incapable to understand what’s happening inside of him. The taste of her lips on his is so intoxicating that he feels his whole body shake to immediately get another dose._

_But he turns around, then turns back to her for a second, opening his mouth to say something. His eyes lock with hers for a split second and her brown irises are open wide, her expression puzzled and confused and surprised, and Draco is almost sure he can read something in it… but then he decides that it’s probably better to stay silent and turns back again._

_Hermione looks at his black jacket, the fire of his kiss still burning on her lips. She raises a hand and lets it rest on them for a moment. He takes a few steps towards the light of the main room, from where the sounds of pages turned and quills scraping against paper can still be heard, even though muffled from the distance and the thick walls._

_Her hand drops down and stretches towards him, reaching for his arm and making him turn around. Hermione presses herself against him, her eyes closed and her mouth filled with Draco’s breath, incredulous at the moan building up in her throat when he starts passing his hands on her back, folding his arms around her and driving her into the shadows._

-

His reflection looked back at him in the mirror.

The dark purple under his eyes gave him a perpetually-tired look. There were bags under his eyes. Since when did he have bags under his eyes?

There was a line forming in between his eyebrows: he tried to stretch it out, but it didn’t disappear. Nor did the lines on his forehead.

Draco raised his left arm to put his hair back in place and the white fabric of his shirt got caught in the brand new daylight: he got stuck mid-way, his eyes still looking at the mirror, but now fixed on the black stain under the sleeve.

He kept breathing slowly, his chest raising almost imperceptibly.

He felt his teeth clench together, his jawbone straining in pressure, lips pressed together.

He suddenly let his arm fall back down. He uncuffed the button on his wrist and pulled up the cotton ungraciously, pushing the sleeve up past his elbow and gripping his arm with his right hand, his heart drumming and shaking his ribcage.

His thumb traced the Mark. The snake’s face, its mouth opened in a silent hiss. The snake’s body. The skeleton head. He pressed down on the holes of the eyes, stopping on the black ink. 

He slowly went from passing his finger pad on the hideous scar on his skin to outright scratching and digging with his nails, in a crescendo of scraping and screaming.

When he had no more air left in his lungs and his cheeks were wet with salty tears, he noticed that his forearm had turned a bright shade of red.

Draco hastily pulled the sleeve back down and let his head fall between his shoulders, holding himself on the sink in front of him, his knuckles white from holding on the ceramic as if his life depended on it, a tornado of memories and voices in his head.

 _Tarnished_.

He snapped his head back up.

Tarnished.

He knew war. He had already been at war. And it had crushed him, it had broken him apart, it had broken everything apart.

And this was just yet another aftermath of it.

The stubble on his cheeks reminded him of pictures of Lucius in his twenties. They had always looked so much alike.

This wasn’t just a war.

It was the goddamn fight of his life.

And _he_ had started it.

His gray eyes flickered in the mirror.


End file.
